Jaclyn's Blog Page

Many of us have been exposed to many advertisements on the internet of being able to earn millions from home and sleep by your swimming pool all day!!! The truth is that the only one who is sleeping by their pool and earning money is the guy who is ripping desperate people off with his automated scam which entails “buy this program and you will earn millions in a month” oh and don’t forget “Money Back Guaranteed”…… and the truth is this guy is not making millions, he is just scoring a couple of bucks off of a couple of desperate people off his automated website.

To be able to make a successful living online you need to work really hard and usually harder than one who has a permanent job and goes home with a regular salary every month.  Working from home often requires that you put in more hours than your average full time employed worker who only puts in an eight hour day five days a week. When you are employed your boss tells you what you must do and that is what you do and take home a salary every month, the boss, on the other hand takes care of all the other departments of the business like marketing, staffing solutions, strategic planning, financial aspects etc. Working for yourself though is completely different you have to worry about making costs and finances meet every month, you have to do all your own marketing, work out all your strategic planning etc.

Working online can be a success if you are disciplined, perseverant, give excellent customer service and work hard. Good quality work and excellent customer service is what makes a business successful. My business thrives on word-of-mouth publicity which is the best advertising, because my clients are happy with the work I provide they recommend me to their contacts and those contacts refer me to their contacts and also all of these clients always come back for more because they know that they will not only receive good quality work but they will also receive friendly yet professional customer service with a smile.

I run a website that assists South Africans to work online and it requires allot of work because I need to give my members a personalized service. An online business requires allot of work, you can’t just put a sign up stating that you are open for business  and expect customers to just fall into your lap. You need to promote your website and get targeted traffic to your website by writing articles and blogs, advertising in classifieds, submitting your site to search engines, you also need to reply to your contact forms and respond to your clients when they buy something from you. Clients really appreciate it when you send them a personalized e-mail thanking them for their support etc. and all of this takes time and work, but in the end my clients are happy and refer others and they keep coming back which makes it all worthwhile in the end.

My site has been up and running for exactly a week now and the response rate has been amazing!!! I have received so many encouraging complements and comments from visitors about SA Bizzz.

I was so nervous about starting this website, there where many times when I doubted myself and my abilities, but I had a vision and a goal which I am proud to say that I have achieved beyond anything that I had imagined. I always knew that this site would be a success but at the back of my mind I constantly had this niggling, anxious feeling of what-if…..?

I guess everyone who starts a new business feels the same way. You have a vision and a goal but what comes with it is a mixture of emotions of anticipation, excitement and anxiety all at the same time.

This brings me to my next point which is faith. Starting your own business takes a huge leap of faith. You never actually know what the turn out will be until you try and with this you are trusting that it will work, but for many people this has not been so. So many people have this wonderful idea for a business and hold such high expectations of the business succeeding and so they throw everything into the business with a leap of faith only to come out worse off than where they started and usually in a lot of debt. The sad thing is that these people often do not do their research properly, they don’t investigate if their product or service is a consumer need or if there is a high enough demand for the business to be successful, for example an Ice cream parlor on the beach might not be in demand in the middle of winter, but a coffee shop that also sells ice cream might be more successful in winter. Also they don’t always consider competition for instance there are over 20 Estate Agency businesses in Jeffreys Bay alone, in each estate Agency there are at least 5-8 Estate Agents all competing to sell properties to earn a bit of commission. Unfortunately many of these Estate Agents never sell a property and so many of these Estate Agencies are closing down because there is just too much competition and the economy is in a drastic recession. The sad thing is that I personally know some of these Estate Agency owners and I know that many of them have put everything that they own into the business only to come out a few months later with nothing and in terrible debt.

The point that I am trying to make here is that when one takes a leap of faith when starting a business they should also be armed with a recipe of 1 cup of common sense 2 cups of research and a double dose of don't put all your eggs into one basket.

Is your product available to all? Is everyone and the keyword here is “EVERYONE” able to purchase your online product? Are you able to accommodate all your willing customers? You have probably answered yes to all my questions but I’m going to tell you no! No you are not accommodating every potential customer and because of this you are losing sales.

Almost everything that is available for purchase online is purchasable only by credit card or PayPal. To use PayPal you need a credit card.

The blatant truth here is that unfortunately with the worldwide recession many people like myself, have lost their jobs and with the loss of a job they also lose their credit cards as well as their credit status with the credit providers. Though I work for myself and earn a better income than when I had a job, I am still considered to be "un-credit worthy" because, I do not earn a regular income.

Then there is the older and wiser generation who are financially well-off but, refuse to own a credit card or even a cheque account because they do all their financial dealings in cash, and then there is the stigma of credit card fraud which detours these oh so valuable potential customers away from doing any form of online financial transactions.

So my point is yes I can afford to buy online goods but, no, I cannot buy anything online because I don't have a credit card. For many of you who are involved in online marketing, you need to investigate this aspect very carefully and ask yourself am I making my product available to all or am I only catering to the select few who own a credit card?

This is what I love about PayFast www.payfast.co.za  a South African payment processor for South Africans to send and receive money online. If you have an online business this is a great payment processor to integrate into your site and it is available to consumers worldwide. The thing is, is that PayFast has several payment features that caters for every consumer. It has a credit card facility, Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) facilities and then my favorite – the Ukash feature!!! Ukash allows consumers who do not own a bank account to buy a voucher using cash, they then use the code on the voucher to make an online purchase. Consumers can purchase this voucher from many different retailers such as Pick’n Pay, Checkers or Shoprite, Ukash is also available to consumers worldwide (except for USA) from various worldwide retailers.

It has been in my experience that a lot of South Africans have a tendency to have a "Work smarter & not harder" mentality. You will also notice that these people have gotten no-where in life!!! They seem to think that they can just sit back and wait for an "opportunity" to land in their lap, but here is the problem, the opportunity does land in their lap, they realize it consists of work and effort so they throw the opportunity away.

The real story is that working harder and smarter go hand in hand. In order to get anywhere in life you have to work hard, if that means working online (not chatting on Facebook with friends)  till 3 am in the morning then so be it, but here is where smarter comes in - if working till 3am means that you are not going to be able to function the next day, would it not be smarter to get an early night and wake up refreshed enough to give quality and more productive work the next day? 

Another example, of harder and smarter going hand-in-hand: Mr. XYZ has a garden service and 4 employees of which one of the employees is hired to manage and supervise the other workers. While his employees are cutting the grass, Mr. XYZ is sitting in his bakkie reading the newspaper, Mr. XYZ thinks he is very smart because he is not working very hard at all, but in actual fact Mr XYZ has an additional employee that he needs to pay so financially he is not very smart. The smart thing for Mr. XYZ to do would be; to have 3 employees and supervise the work himself and use the saved money to buy more efficient equipment for his business. He could also give a more personal service to his clients and in turn have happier clients, which will mean more business from the happy clients.